The Land Down Under

My commute to and from my new work has gotten much, much easier recently.

I should start by saying that when I first went to the office building where I work for the interview and the actual first day on the job, I relied on the GPS unit that my folks graciously gave me.  Unfortunately, it sent me through downtown Baltimore, which is a terrible place to be if you're in a car.  The whole trip would take just over an hour, which is not a good way to spend your day.

Determined to find a better solution, I turned to my good friend, the internet.  According to Google maps, if I took a toll road, I could skip the stop-and-go of downtown.  So I wrote down the directions, made sure I had cash, and set off for work.  It turns out that the toll is for a tunnel that goes under Baltimore Harbor, which is kind of cool.  What's really cool is that taking the route that includes the tunnel drops my commute down to just over thirty minutes.  What's uncool is the price of the toll: $4 each way (or $40 a week).  Luckily, I overheard some co-workers talking about discount plans that, once signed up, will cut the cost by about two-thirds.  That's a lot more reasonable.

Even without the discount, taking the tunnel saves about an hour of my day that would otherwise be spent sitting in traffic.  Getting that time back is worth the price of admission.

(On an unrelated note, the building I work in is right on the waterfront and I can see the harbor from a window near my cubicle.  And, because Maryland has such a curly coastline, the water is actually to west.  I could almost forget that I wasn't looking at the Pacific.)